Telegram appears to be testing the waters for another way to generate revenue. The latest beta version of the iOS app includes reaction emoji and stickers that users will only be able to unlock if they subscribe to Telegram Premium — a service that's not currently available.
Anyone who selects these stickers or emoji in the beta is nudged to join Telegram Premium, Android Police reports. It seems users who receive one of the premium reactions won't see it until they sign up as well. The reactions include the likes of a sobbing duck.
No other details about Telegram Premium have been revealed as yet. Nor has Telegram officially announced the service. Founder Pavel Durov has been clear about the need for the messaging app to make money. In December 2020, he announced Telegram would start serving ads in public channels the following year. He also mentioned plans to add premium features aimed at enterprise and power users.
Telegram has long been adamant that it won't start charging for existing features. It remains to be seen what shape Telegram Premium takes or even if the company will actually release paid features for everyday users.
Grindr's past willingness to share sensitive data may have been more problematic than previously thought. The Wall Street Journalunderstands precise Grindr user location data was collected from the online ad network MoPub (once owned by Twitter) and put on sale through its partner company UberMedia (now UM) since "at least" 2017. The LGBTQ dating app curbed the practice when it limited location data collection in early 2020, but there's a possibility that legacy information might still be available.
An anonymous former senior employee speaking to the Journal claims Grindr initially didn't believe sharing location data with marketers posed privacy issues. Ad execs reportedly told the company that real-time bidding, or displaying ads based on a user's immediate location, was transforming the industry.
Grindr told the Journal in a statement that its 2020 policy change meant it shared less data with advertisers than "any of the big tech platforms" and most dating app rivals, although it didn't address historical info. Twitter said UberMedia was held to MoPub's data use restrictions at the time, while UberMedia's current owner Near said "thousands of entities" have access to data shared in the real-time bidding system. It challenged concerns that location data without direct personal information could help trace individuals.
Near's claim isn't necessarily true, however. Catholic publication The Pillarsaid it used sold Grindr data to track usage and ultimately oust a senior church official. There are also fears that countries with anti-LGBTQ laws could use Grindr locations to arrest the app's users — Grindr restricted location features during the Beijing Winter Olympics precisely to prevent this kind of abuse with athletes. The US forced Grindr's Chinese owner Kunlun to sell the company by mid-2020, in part over worries China's government might misuse personal info for American citizens.
The company's own practices were also under scrutiny at the time. It reportedly shared HIV statuses with app optimization firms, and Kunlun's Chinese engineers had access to a database of sensitive info for months. Security was also an issue. One vulnerability permitted an outside app to collect exact locations, while another let intruders hijack accounts using only an email address. Simply put, Grindr wasn't as conscious of its data handling as it apparently is now.
We may a few days out from World Password Day on May 5th, but LastPass is already celebrating by discounting its paid tiers for new and free users. Through May 9th, you can subscribe to LastPass Premium, Families or Business for 20 percent less than usual. That will bring a Premium membership down to around $29 annually instead of the usual $36, while Families would cost about $38 annually and Business down to $58 per user each year.
If you aren't using a password manager yet, one could make your life much easier by taking the work out of remembering all of the credentials for your various accounts. One you create a LastPass account, the password you use for it will be the only one you truly have to remember going forward. Then, you can save all of your other username and password combinations to LastPass, which will then fill them in across the web as you shop online, check out Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites and more. We also appreciate the service's password generator feature, which will make strong credentials for you so you don't have to come up with a nonsensical phrase that meets all of a site's requirements on your own. There's even a version of the password generator feature that anyone can use.
LastPass is also compatible with most systems including Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and others, so it'll work across all of your devices. There are also LastPass extensions you can download for Chrome, Safari and other browsers, which will let you easily access your passwords and vault from the bookmarks bar. Speaking of the vault, that's a LastPass feature that basically lets you securely save important, non-password information like addresses, files, banking and credit card numbers and more. While LastPass' free version gives you most of the basic features, updating to a paid tier adds things like secure sharing, 1GB of file storage, emergency access and dark web monitoring into the mix.
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Apple recently sent notices to some indie developers, warning them that their app will be pulled from the App Store if it's not updated within 30 days. The tech giant has had a policy in place against outdated and abandoned applications since 2016, but the move suggests that it's now more rigorously enforcing that rule. Some of the letters' recipients criticized the policy for being a barrier to indie developers, what with how tough it is to keep up with platform changes and how much work it takes to roll out even a minor update. Now, Apple has published a post clarifying why some old apps are in danger of being removed, along with the announcement that it's giving developers more time to update their applications.
In the post, the company said that it will only send removal notices to developers whose apps haven't been updated in three years, as well as to devs whose apps have not "been downloaded at all or extremely few times during a rolling 12 month period." Apple said that dropping outdated apps makes newer ones more discoverable and also ensures users can enjoy games and tools that have been optimized for its latest OS and devices.
As a lot of people know, there are older apps don't work as well on the latest generation of phones, tablets and laptops anymore, delivering a subpar user experience. Still, 30 days might not be nowhere near enough time for smaller developers to conjure up an update. The good news is that Apple has extended its grace period and is now giving them up to 90 days to update their applications. Users will get to keep apps that are already installed on their devices even if they end up getting deleted, and developers can continue earning from them through microtransactions.
I spent about an hour hand-picking songs for my first Amazon AMP radio show. The social-audio-but-with-music app offers the chance to play radio DJ with just a phone and your imagination. I tried to pick a catchy name for my debut broadcast – “The best House Classics” or something like that. Like all music bores, I was confident I was about to blow some minds with my impeccable taste and hand-picked floor fillers. All that was left to do was click the “Go Live” button. Once you tap it, the app counts you down 5…4…3… . I cleared my throat and then… silence.
AMP was initially reported as something of a Clubhouse competitor, but that’s not really the best way to describe it. Yes, you can sorta-kinda use it as a live chat platform, but music is really the selling point here. When you create a “show” you can add songs from Amazon Music’s library and then stream them to your audience. In between hosts are doing anything from chatting about sports, to comedy skits, having guests call in or just letting the music play. On paper, it’s the app teenage me, with his dual cassette deck and microphone, had been waiting for all his life. It’s just a shame that, right now in its beta form, no one’s really listening.
I’ve spent the last week or two exploring the app and hosting shows and I barely peaked at four simultaneous listeners. Briefly. Usually I was lucky to get one or two people tuning in, but more often than not I was alone. And I definitely didn’t do a whole hour-long show talking to myself in between ‘90s drum & bass tracks. Definitely not a thing that happened. Twice.
Engadget
It’s hard to tell if this is a true reflection of the interest in AMP, given it’s in beta. It's not difficult to get in, as long as you have access to the US App Store / have an iPhone. Technically you also need an invite code, but given that the official AMP Twitter account has one right up top, the app is basically open to everyone who meets the first two criteria.
I speculated I am at a disadvantage being located in Europe, so my shows tend to fall in the middle of the American work day. But I checked the app regularly and even at typical US commute and evening times other people’s shows rarely had more than 10 listeners, usually half that. But again, this is a beta so not an indication of too much. I bring it up now though for the following reason: without a listener, you cannot play songs and that presents a problem. Hence the silence at the start of my big debut show.
In fact, there are a few more restrictions. Not only must you have at least one listener to play music, you can only play two songs from the same album or three songs from the same artist within a three hour period. These rules make some sense to prevent the free app being abused. But also that presents a big problem during the beta stage. If I have no listeners, I can’t play a song… so I can only talk. But what is the point of talking if no one is listening?
It certainly made for some intimate moments. I joined someone’s show when they currently had no listeners. I could practically hear the host excitedly rushing to play a song now that they could. I then enjoyed a 1-on-1 human-curated show of hip-hop. Likewise for my own shows, there were definitely some weird moments when I realized it’s just me playing songs for someone else. I ended up using a second account on a spare phone so I wouldn’t have to wait for someone to join (hence the DnB party for one) to fully test the service for this story. This should be less of a problem in the future, but it was frustrating at the start, waiting up to 30 minutes sometimes for a listener to join so you could kick a song off.
Amazon also imposes other curious rules that seem a little ornery if not hard to enforce. For example, you may not make a show consisting mostly of listener requests, you may not announce playlists ahead of time and you may not announce a song until just before it is being played. The difference between can and may I’ll leave up to you.
Setting up a show is straightforward. Tap the button top left, add a title, choose some topics (tags), type a description and then either add songs to a playlist or just throw caution to the wind and go live, adding songs later. I’d recommend having a playlist fleshed out because navigating the song menu screen isn’t very slick right now. You can only enter global search terms – there’s no filter by artist or song title or genre etc. – so finding what you want can sometimes be hit and miss.
More importantly, the library doesn’t seem to be fully fleshed out right now. AMP’s official help pages claim there are “tens of millions of songs” but I sometimes couldn’t find what I was looking for. To be fair, this was usually down to my weird taste in niche ‘90s dance music but I did find songs on decent-size labels that were absent.
For example, “Gold Dust” by DJ Fresh is on Amazon Music for sure, but it wasn’t available in AMP. This is a real crime as anyone who knows that track will attest. I did check again over a week later and saw that a remix had since been added, so it seems the library is growing in real time. More surprisingly, another time I looked for a track by Hot Chip and noticed only half of their albums were listed.
A related issue is that you can’t preview tracks before adding them to your playlist. In my case, that meant a few occasions where I had found a version of the song I wanted, but golly was it not the one I was expecting when I played it, making for a slightly awkward record scratch moment. If you have better taste in music than I, you’re probably fine, but if you were hoping to spin niche cuts or even some fairly well known synthpop you might want to revise that plan for now.
I know AMP is designed to be a mobile-first experience, but I do wish there were at least some tools to prep your show on desktop first. I often resorted to finding tunes on my PC and then just looking up tracks on the phone while setting up the show. I also learned the hard way that if you schedule a show for the future and then sleep through the time it was set for, the show and all the tracks you added to it disappears (I’d at least have liked the option to reschedule it!).
Relatedly, you can’t add tracks to some sort of “record box” or bookmark them for later shows. I found myself thinking of great tunes for other shows but had to just keep a notepad going for later reference. Likewise, once you finish a show, that’s it, poof… gone. There’s no way for people to go back and listen again or scroll through your feed to see what you tend to play etc.
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In its current state, the app also doesn’t offer any way to fade out a song or speak over it while it’s playing. This seems minor, but it does mean you either have to wait until the bitter end of a song before you talk (and then with no music “bed”) or cut a track off prematurely. I heard people doing both but it would be nice to have a more gentle way to transition tracks.
Once your show is over, AMP will give you a little slide show of stats. As you can imagine, this was a bit painful for me as it gleefully told me I peaked at two listeners and had one like, but this would definitely be cool once you have an audience.
Amazon has enlisted some popular creators to showcase the platform and give it some gravitas. These are instantly identifiable as they will be the only shows with a bunch of people listening. AMP promotes these accounts and they are featured on the website, but I do wonder where all these listeners go the rest of the time. The fact you can’t currently click on the show's listener count to see who’s tuning in means you can’t size up potential listeners for your own show.
I'm live @OnAmp_ but there's no way to share the link etc so have fun with that!
In fact, the “social media” element of the app is possibly the most limited part right now. For starters there’s no way to share a link to your show. I know the app is in beta, but given how open that is, I would have thought sharing links is a basic enough thing to enable. AMP offers links to recommended shows in its newsletters which you can adulterate to link to your own but you need the app installed for them to work so that’s still less than ideal.
Discovery is also not fully fleshed out at this point. When you open the app you’ll be presented with shows currently on air as you swipe through one by one. Then once you reach the end you’ll see what’s scheduled for the future, but right now there’s no real way to drill down by genre or topic. You can search, but a host needs to have scheduled shows for them to turn up in results.
It’s also clear that, right from the start, Amazon is trying to encourage diverse voices to join and host. The company was explicit about that in the run up to its launch, and it seems to be working. The types of show and the people behind them have all been refreshingly varied and this I feel is important to AMP finding its way to stand out. The music aspect alone makes it different from rivals like Clubhouse, Greenroom and even Twitter Spaces. But the voices it amplifies will be the secret sauce.
This for me was really the most rewarding part. I thought hosting my own shows would be fun, and it was, but it was the exposure to other music that was the most rewarding. I often joined shows with no listeners to allow them to kick off some tunes and then found myself staying. Other times I figured I’d dip into a show with a genre I don’t normally listen to and was more often than not surprised to find things I liked. Being a DJ is cool, but hearing new, hand-picked music is even cooler.
Rough edges aside, there’s a lot of promise here. It’s understandable that no one wants to listen to my favorite Happy Hardcore songs (the ones I could find on the app at least) at 2pm on a Wednesday. But if, like me, you kinda prefer the human touch over an algorithmic recommendation and the chance to stumble into new worlds of music then AMP makes a lot of sense. And of course, as with all such creator-based services as more people join, the culture and flavor of the platform starts to change organically (remember when TikTok was about people dancing to songs?). Once AMP is open to the public proper, it’ll be interesting to see where it goes. For now, if you want to hear rando dance music, I’ll be here… waiting.
The GeForce Now macOS app should run more smoothly for many Mac users after the addition of native support for Apple's M1 chips. NVIDIA initially rolled out M1 support last year, albeit through Rosetta, a translation process that allows apps based on x86–64 architecture to run on Apple's chips.
NVIDIA says the app will now consume less power, have faster startup times and offer an all-round improved experience on M1-based MacBooks, iMacs and Mac Minis. In addition, the latest version of the cloud gaming app includes a revamped overlay that displays server-side rendering framerates.
GeForce Now support for another batch of games was also announced (which is something NVIDIA typically does every Thursday). One of this week's additions is Amazon's hit free-to-play RPG Lost Ark. Given that the game doesn't have native macOS support, Mac users who are interested in checking it out now have a way to do so. Other new titles that GeForce Now users can stream include Dune: Spice Wars, Sol Cresta and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodhunt.
At the start of the year, Google announced the Privacy Sandbox on Android project, a new system designed to eventually replace today's existing third-party cookie schemes and reinvent a more privacy-centered method for serving advertisements. After an initial round of alpha testing and feedback, Google announced on Thursday that the first developer's preview of the sandbox is now available as part of Android 13 beta 1.
The Privacy Sandbox is a multi-year development effort that will "limit sharing of user data with third parties and operate without cross-app identifiers, including advertising ID," Google wrote in a February announcement. "We’re also exploring technologies that reduce the potential for covert data collection, including safer ways for apps to integrate with advertising SDKs."
This preview provides developers with early looks at the sandbox's SDK Runtime and Topics API so that they can better understand how they'll fit into their apps and processes once it is officially released. We first saw Topics API back in January. It pulls data from the Chrome browser to identify the user's top five interests for the week, based on their search and browsing history. Those topics are then compared against a database of topics from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Google's own data. Partner publishers can then ping the Topics API, see what the user is currently into, and then serve the most appropriate ads without having to know every nitty-gritty detail about their potential customer.
Developers will also have access to an early version of the Fledge API. This allows sites to run "remarket" to existing users — ie, serving users ads to remind them that they left items in their shopping cart and should just check out already. The Sandbox comes with everything that developers will need to test it, including the Android SDK and 64-bit Android Emulator. The company intends to further refine the toolset over the coming months and welcomes feedback and questions from the developer community
The public Android 13 beta is here, and it’s our first chance to look at what might be coming in Google’s OS update. We’ve already learned a bit about what the company will be focusing on improving for the next version, and a lot of it sounds like backend changes that might not make a huge impact on daily use. Android 13 is supposed to bring finer privacy controls and more themed app icons. Though, there’s probably stuff in the works that the company has yet to share – don’t forget Google I/O coming up in two weeks.
Most of the updates in Android 13 beta 1 are barely noticeable, and many of them are developer-centric. Things like more-granular permissions for media file access, better error reporting and “anticipatory audio routing” aren’t things that will immediately make an impact on how you use your phone. These are tweaks that app makers will have to implement before you’ll see a difference, as are upcoming features like themed app icons. Still, there are a few new functions that might pique your interest.
Before I go any further, I have to warn you, as usual, that installing any beta software comes with the risk of losing data. You’ll be opting into a platform that might not be stable, meaning your apps might crash or no longer work. If you’re very certain you want to give this beta a shot and are fully aware of what you’re getting into, you can enroll a supported Pixel phone on Google’s website, and a notification will appear on the device. I signed up with a Pixel 4a and downloaded the 1.79GB update with no trouble.
One of the first things I noticed after installing the beta was the refreshed media playback box. It’s taller in Android 13, compared to the one on my Pixel 6 Pro (running Android 12), and uses album art as the background. Instead of just showing pause, previous and next buttons in addition to the song title and artist, the new panel shows an animated progress bar that squiggles as the music goes on. On the card for Spotify, at least, I also got options for shuffling and liking the track.
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This box’s new layout is great. Not only does it show more information and in a more attractive way, it also lets you drag the slider to fast forward through parts of podcast episodes without having to unlock your phone or launch an app. That said, I do miss the bigger buttons for skipping a track. Plus, it’s slightly buggy and said my music was playing on the Pixel 4a instead of my Nest Audio speakers where it actually was streaming.
Android Police also spotted a new QR code scanner shortcut in the quick settings panel that launches a dedicated viewfinder. In my brief testing, this was not only super speedy, as Android Police pointed out, but it’s much easier to use. Instead of having to open your camera, aim it at a code and try to hit the tiny little Chrome bar that pops up, you can just point this new scanner in the direction of the symbol and it latches on instantly. A box pops up at the bottom with an “Open” button that’s larger and much easier to tap, and the viewfinder closes, instead showing a picture of the code you just snapped. That means you’ll no longer have to hold your phone steady to keep the code in view while using your other hand to tap the tiny, tiny link.
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This is definitely a more convenient way to scan QR codes, which have become more prevalent during the pandemic, with many businesses using them to serve up contactless menus. But I will say that, on very rare occasions where you are aiming for one particular code out of a few, this version of the scanner is trickier to handle. Since it immediately snaps a photo of the first QR code it sees, you’ll have to wrangle it a bit to get the one you actually want.
Though Android Police reports that the lock screen shortcut to access Android’s page of smart home device controls can now be accessed without unlocking your device, this wasn’t true for me. I was still asked to enter my pin when I tried to turn on my living room lights from my Pixel 4a. But this could be a bug and it might be working for other beta users.
All told, there were surprisingly more user-facing changes in Android 13 beta 1 than I had expected, and I’ll need some time to dig around for things we may have missed. But I still wouldn’t recommend anyone other than the most eager early adopter to install it — unless you scan dozens of QR codes a day. For now, it’s still too early to tell what Android 13 will look like, but it’s nice to see Google is working on some thoughtful new features at least.
In case there was any doubt that Snap is among the many platforms trying to challenge TikTok, the company just introduced a new suite of creator-friendly editing tools called “director mode.” The company showed off the new editing tools, which are rolling out “in the coming months” at the company’s Partner Summit event.
In a blog post, Snap said that director mode is meant to help people create more “polished” content than what is currently possible with Snapchat’s in-app camera. The new tools include a TikTok-like green screen feature that relies on Snapchat’s vast library of augmented reality lenses. There are also new camera controls, including the ability to record simultaneously from the front and rear-facing camera similar to the once popular app Frontback. There’s also a new “quick edit” tool to tweak multiple snaps at once, and new ways to sleep up or slow down videos.
As the name suggests, director mode is geared toward Snapchat’s growing ranks of video creators, and the new tools could help fuel fresh content for Spotlight, the app’s hub for TikTok-like short form videos. It could also help Snap Stars — the company’s term for public, verified accounts — make more interesting content for their Stories. Which could come in handy as Snap also recently introduced new revenue sharing features for Snap Stars with mid-roll ads.
Snap also teased a new partnership with LiveNation, which will allow concertgoers and festival attendees to access exclusive augmented reality features crafted specifically for the live events. These include the ability to virtually “try on” merch with AR, a “find friends” feature and other AR effects. The upcoming Electric daisy Carnival festival will be the first to take advantage of the features, though Snap says it will be available at other events this year.
The app is also further building out its augmented reality shopping features. It’s adding a new section of its app called “Dress Up” that will be exclusively dedicated to AR “try-on” experiences from brands and creators. It’s also making its AR shopping features available to other apps via its Camera Kit developer platform. The move will allow retailers and brands to add Snapchat-powered augmented reality try-on features to their existing apps.
Avid is taking a page out of the Adobe playbook by shifting Pro Tools entirely to a subscription model. There's no longer an option to buy a perpetual license, which granted customers lifetime access to a certain version of Pro Tools.
Instead, those who want access to the widely-used DAW from now on will have to choose between three plans as part of a revamped subscription structure. All of the tiers include two new virtual instruments: a drum machine and sequencer called GrooveCell and the SynthCell virtual synth. There's a free trial available for each plan.
The lowest tier is Pro Tools Artist, which costs $10 per month or $99 per year. This is aimed at musicians who are just starting out and don't necessarily need every bell and whistle at their disposal. Along with the DAW, you'll be able to use more than 100 plugins and hundreds of virtual instruments and loops. This tier offers 32 audio tracks, 32 instrument tracks and 64 MIDI tracks. You can record up to 16 audio sources simultaneously.
The middle tier is called Pro Tools Studio. For $40 per month or $299 per year, you'll be able to create mixes with 512 audio and instrument tracks. There's support for Dolby Atmos and surround sound, as well as advanced automation and Clip Effects editing. Avid will transition current Pro Tools subscribers and perpetual license customers with active plans to this plan.
The top tier is called Pro Tools Flex. This will offer access to Pro Tools Ultimate, 2,048 audio tracks, up to 256 simultaneous recording inputs, the SoundFlow Cloud Avid Edition workflow automation platform and much more. That plan costs $100 per month or $999 annually. Active Pro Tools Ultimate subscribers will be moved to Pro Tools Flex. Pro Tools Ultimate perpetual license customers with active plans will receive Pro Tools Ultimate upgrades.
Those with a perpetual Pro Tools license and expired support contract can still get back on a current software updates and support plan. They can take out a subscription to one of the new tiers as well.
